Linkin Park has come a long way since it was a support act for the Union Underground just a few years ago.
Solipsistic New York leadership led the public to believe that hard rock with hip-hop inflections and grinding guitars was a blasé detour down memory lane.
Hipsters quickly acquainted Linkin Park with irksome rap-metal wannabes making music primed for “SNL” spoofs and witty message board banter chalked full of emoticons. They reduced others’ appreciation of the act to nothing more than gullible ignorance. Nine million albums later, Linkin Park is arguably the biggest band in the world.
The group’s spectacular debut, Hybrid Theory, first made splashes and then waves. Fragmented pixels of hard rock rearranged through the eye of a DJ and the ear of a guitar player propelled Hybrid Theory to become the most successful recording of 2001. The album has sold over eight million copies to date.
The sophomore follow-up, Meteora, is absorbing, crisp, and an airtight rebuke of rock’s new direction. Just shy of 37 minutes, the 13 tracks on Meteora are sharp, like a Ginsu fresh off the factory line.
A brief intro of hammers and breaking glass are indicative of the importance of the album at this point in Linkin Park’s career. The trendy, osmotic glass ceiling hovering over the rock world was supposed to inhibit Linkin Park’s growth, but the band has somehow maneuvered through its openings, bringing along over 800,000, of its closest friends according to first-week sales figures. 50’s got company at the top.
“Don’t Stay” opens with Brad Delson’s penetrating fuzz rolling atop drummer Rob Bourdon’s double drum kicks. Vocalist Chester Bennington owns the track, offering up blister-inducing crooning against the three-minute onslaught that is a surefire opener for the upcoming tour.
It was in the back of a tour bus on Ozzfest that Bennington strummed the four-chord intro to “Somewhere I Belong” on an acoustic guitar, unsure of what to do with the folksy feel of the riff. Enter vocalist/emcee Mike Shinoda.
Through the wonder of Pro Tools, the versatile and unofficial leader of Linkin Park rearranged the melodic notes into a backward sample that served as a launching pad for the first single from Meteora. A year later the song was complete and shipped to radio, serving as a proper introduction to Meteora.
In the sixth position, “Easier To Run” is the musical and spiritual centerpiece of Meteora. The song itself is the embodiment of the epic feel the band was hoping to achieve despite the transience of the album. “Easier To Run” is bold and magnanimous, washed in distortion, and a further exploration of Bennington and Shinoda’s vocal dynamic.
At 135 beats-per-minute, “Faint,” may have been twice as fast as originally intended, but is immediately gripping. A violin composition grafts itself to the shifting tune that flows from drum-and-bass verses to aggro-laden choruses and breakdowns that make it difficult to pigeonhole the track.
“Cure For The Itch,” a sample-and-scratch instrumental from Hybrid Theory and a true gem on the breakout album has been reincarnated in spirit on Meteora with “Session,” an ethereal and ambience-driven counterpart that lends itself perfectly to the cinema. You could definitely feel this track rolling over opening credits. Should the rock thing not work out, Linkin Park could put out one hell of an instrumental album.
Meteora is a full experience. The enhanced-album package offers up a DVD documentary on the making of the album that refuses to eschew the hardships and failures of the tedious process. Also included in the case is a 36-page booklet with lyrics, song notes and impressive artwork. The disc itself is chalked full of enhancements, including a documentary on the art of Meteora, the music video to “Somewhere I Belong,” and access to exclusive web-based content.
Meteora’s brevity lends itself to a complete start-to-finish listening, much like the Burn EP by Nine Inch Nails. And like Trent’s masterpiece, Meteora is best experienced through headphones. Not those three-watt Koss behemoths, but the good stuff. The minute electronic accents scattered across the album are worth a proper listen.
Meteora burns fast and bright, but even more is expected on future releases. Linkin Park has much to prove in a fickle music world — a tall order for a band that was never supposed to last in the first place.
Grade: A/B
